DVD review: The girl who kicked the hornets' nest

Lisbeth Salander in her final battle against a shadowy organization.

The final chapter in the Millenium series, even if I prefer calling it the “Girl who does something” series, is better than the second one but still worse than the first. See a little known fact is that the three movies that came into the world cinemas are but a smaller version of the original six part miniseries that was transmitted on Swedish TV. While the first movie didn’t suffer too much the last two feels at moments oddly disjointed and incomplete with a plethora of continuity errors that maybe are not errors at all and an uneven pacing.

Plot wise this is directly a sequel of the second one, is not really possible to enjoy it without seeing “The girl who played with fire”. Not a lot is introduced here but I consider this a wise move, the second movie introduced so much stuff that really piling more angst on Lisbeth Salander would have been silly. Instead we spent the whole movie tidying up loose threads and solving the situation brought by the previous movie.

There is more to do for the secondary characters, chiefly Michael Blomkvist, and the plot is more reasonable and relatable, still the titular heroine remain a character so difficult, so frail, that I find it difficult to relate to.

Actually looking back to the trilogy I see a story that’s been clearly stolen by a breakthrough character, the various plots that eventually led to the discovery of Sweden “dark secrets”, which apparently do exists at least according to the author, are really just foil for an heroine who practically suffered every evil that society can inflict on a woman. In the end even the author avatar, Michael Blomkvist is a middle age journalist exactly like Stieg Larsson, appears unable to not even establish a proper relationship with her.

Personally I don’t like her too much, there is a point where the piling of the angst becomes too much for me and the punk attitude that she maintain to keep people away from her actually manages to keep me away, but I understand why and how she captured the imagination of millions. A broken butterfly is a very powerful concept.